


A Fistful of Sarahs

by lunabee34 (Lorraine)



Category: Terminator (Movies)
Genre: Doppelganger, Fix-It, Gen, Movie: Terminator: Dark Fate, Multiverse, Post-Canon, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:14:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21839542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/pseuds/lunabee34
Summary: The sky cracks open, and Sarah watches herself tumble out of a rift in the space time continuum.  She’s older than she is now, and she’s got a lot more scars, and she’s carrying the biggest and weirdest looking gun Sarah’s ever seen.
Comments: 22
Kudos: 59
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Fistful of Sarahs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amilyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amilyn/gifts).



> This is a treat for Amilyn who said: 
> 
> _I love Sarah Connor. I'm changing my sign-up at the last minute because tonight I saw "Dark Fate" and...MAN. Just...WOW. She's badass, angry, bitter, empty...she's had her whole life stolen over and over--no MATTER which iteration of Sarah it is. And I love all of her._
> 
> I hope I did your amazing prompts justice.
> 
> Title taken from an episode of TNG.

The sky cracks open, and Sarah watches herself tumble out of a rift in the space time continuum. She’s older than she is now, and she’s got a lot more scars, and she’s carrying the biggest and weirdest looking gun Sarah’s ever seen.

“Take cover!” the older version of her yells and vaporizes the Rev 9 into a cloud of ash that settles like snow onto Dani and Grace’s huddled forms.

Then she walks over to Sarah in all her naked glory, backlit by fire with that fucked up gun resting on one shoulder and her white hair shining like a goddamn saint’s halo. She holds out her hand and says, smirking, “Come with me if you want to live.” Sarah takes her hand.

When the dam is ten miles in the rearview of their stolen van, old Sarah slices open the stock of the gun with Sarah’s knife and jabs Grace with one of several syringes hidden inside.

“How is that possible?” Grace gasps. “How did you bring anything with you?”

“Living tissue grafted an inch thick on the surface of the weapon,” she says. “Wasn’t sure it was going to work.” She glances at Sarah. “Call me Connor. It’ll be less confusing that way.”

Then Connor pulls a canister of what looks like mercury from the gun stock and pours it onto Carl’s shredded torso; within minutes he’s shiny and new again, all his limbs rippling out into lethal solidity. Sarah has a flashback to intense heat and her son screaming; she bites her cheek hard enough to draw blood and breathes deeply through her nose.

“You hate that I fixed him,” Connor says. ‘I get that, but Carl is necessary. Anyway, he’s not so bad for a machine even if the dad jokes do get tedious after awhile.”

Carl says, “My sense of humor is an acquired taste.”

“What else have you got in that gun?” Dani says, trying to look over her shoulder and drive at the same time.

Connor says, “It’s rude to ask a lady about the contents of her handbag.”

On the way to one of Sarah’s hideouts, Connor talks to Carl, Dani, and Grace like she’s known them for years (which Sarah supposes she has), and doesn’t talk to Sarah at all, just watches Sarah like she can see all the way down to her damn soul. It’s creepy.

The safe house has a big yard with a swing set and a fire pit and a picnic table. Sarah plants herself at the picnic table and watches Carl build a fire. Her shoulder is killing her. She’s getting too old for this shit. Connor, who is definitely too old for this shit, comes out of the house and makes a beeline for Sarah. Fantastic. All this ordeal needs to be complete is a heart to heart with the ghost of Christmas future. 

“We need to talk,” Connor says. She sits across from Sarah, takes out the knife she neglected to return, and stabs it into the picnic table. “All this tech we created, it rises up against us every time. Wipe out Skynet, and Legion takes its place. Destroy Legion, and we end up with TerraCorp. No matter what we do, war with the machines is inevitable.”

Sarah yanks her knife out of the table. “What happened to ‘there is no fate but what we make for ourselves?’”

“Yeah,” Connor says, “turns out that’s bullshit.”

“So everything I’ve done, everything I’ve lost, it’s all for nothing? We can’t ever win?” The swings in the yard creak in the breeze, and Sarah sees a million children vaporize all over again. She and John stopped that future years ago; the world’s not supposed to end anymore. She feels like she’s going to throw up.

“I never said that. You just need a new motto. The war is always coming, but there’s always hope, too. And that hope starts with you. Don’t you get it?” Connor says. “This was never about John. It’s not about her, either.” She nods her head at Dani laughing about something with Grace on the other side of the yard, their hands stretched out to the fire. “And it won’t be about Kate Brewster when you find her or Kyle Reese when you finally see him again. It’s about you.”

Sarah says, “What are you fucking talking about?” Denial coils up in her belly, cold tendrils snaking through her abdomen. 

Connor looks at her as if she knows exactly what she’s feeling. Sarah’s getting really tired of that look. “Who do you think taught John to pick a lock and shoot a gun and beat the shit out of machines? Who do you think taught him to be a leader? Who do you think is going to teach Dani how to build bombs and win a knife fight and set up a weapons cache?”

Sarah shakes her head. This is unbelievable. John was supposed to save them all, and now that he’s gone, that job apparently belongs to Dani—not Sarah, Dani. “No. You’re wrong. I was the mother of the leader of the resistance, and now my son is dead, and I’m nothing.”

“What did you call yourself? Just a womb?” Connor says. “Fuck that. Sarah Connor _is_ the resistance. _We_ are the resistance.”

“All I’m hearing is delusions of grandeur.”

Connor says, “God, I forgot what an ass I could be.”

“I find that surprising.”

“Shut up and listen to me,” Connor says. “We haven’t won, not exactly, but we’ve successfully pushed back the timeline for Judgement Day by decades now. One Sarah has even held off the war for half a century. Maybe one day we can beat the machines for good, but for now, all we can do is delay the inevitable.”

“What do you mean, one Sarah?” Sarah says.

Connor smirks at her again. “You’ll see.” Then she stands up and starts stripping off her clothes with a lack of self-consciousness that Sarah can’t ever imagine acquiring.

Sarah says, “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’ve got places to be.” She turns to Dani, Grace, and Carl who left the fire as soon Connor got naked and are hovering on the periphery of their conversation. “Quit gawking, and go get my gun,” she says. Once Connor has the gun slung over her shoulder again, she says, “You might want to step back for this.”

Just before she’s engulfed in a sphere of lightning, Connor says to Sarah, “Remember the mission. There’s always hope.” Then she curls up into a ball, the sky cracks open, and she’s gone.


End file.
